Photoshop, considered a staple in most media and creative design houses, is among the most pirated applications in the world, according to Drew McManus, Adobe’s director of anti-piracy operations. Adobe is a member of the Business Software Alliance, which estimates that one in four software applications used in the U.S. has been pirated. On Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives approved $10 million for the Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State to fund anti-piracy operations.

Like other software companies, Adobe characterized its DRM efforts as a trial, but acknowledged that the technology will likely be rolled out eventually to its other products. However, the process will be a tentative one, McManus said.

“Photoshop 7 in Australia has had activation for several months at this point,” McManus said. “We want to gauge customer reaction and business rules, and just make sure we’ve thought of all the things we can think of. Obviously, what we want to do is prevent the most pervasive types of piracy. But everything needs to be considered in light of the honest customer first.”

Adobe’s DRM experiment deliberately leans toward the lenient side, McManus said. Only the boxed copies of Photoshop and Collections contain DRM, and both the box and registration application alert the user that they will be required to activate the software, either over the Internet or over the phone. The activation application does not contain a link to any explanatory details, but Adobe has published a FAQ on its Asia-Pacific web site to address questions.

Adobe’s license agreement permits a copy of the software to be installed on two different machines. Unlike Macrovision’s trial, the software does not have to be manually uninstalled and deactivated before moving it to a new machine.

“We don’t have any sense of un-activationthat’s sort of complex from the user perspective,” McManus said. “But when you do that (additional) install, the server monitors the timing and okays the additional activation.

A time-based algorithm determines if the third install is acceptable, from Adobe’s perspective. Frequent installations will flag the server, requiring a phone call to allow the installation to proceed. However, Adobe’s tech support representatives have been encouraged to assume the user is a legitimate user, McManus said, and the reps can approve the process with a click of the mouse.

“You could technically do three installs, and if you had adhered to the license you’d remove (the first), but in a technical sense we don’t anything there to prevent that,” McManus said.

Adobe is also considering additional means to prevent piracy. Users have posted pirated corporate copies of Microsoft’s Windows XP to the Internet, which do not require activation. However, those versions can not be upgraded with service packs. McManus said that or a similar solution was also being explored.

At the end of this year or the beginning of 2004, Adobe will likely pick a second product and install DRM, McManus said. The product will not necessarily be Photoshop, he added. DRM will be rolled out in a product written for a certain language, such as English, which means it might not be restricted to a particular region, such as North America.

For the last three months, copies of Photoshop 7 sold in Australia have contained a version of Macrovision’s SafeCast software, which Adobe licensed and used to create its own user interface, server, and technology. McManus promised that both the application and the Macrovision DRM technology could be completely uninstalled from a user’s hard drive.

The software transmits a serial number over the Internet, which the server parses, checking to se how many times the software has been installed. If approved, the server sends back an activation code. All in all, the process should take between 5 and 30 seconds, according to Adobe.

So far, Aussie customers have taken DRM in stride, McManus said. “The press coverage has been primarily factual,” he said. “One third of our customers who call in are routed to a live rep, who asks permission for a few survey questions. I read every single one. They’ve been mainly shoulder-shruggingit doesn’t seem like a big deal.”

McManus said that the company’s diverse product base makes the question of DRM a complex one. Corporate customers installing Photoshop on a thousand “seats”, or machines, don’t want the hassle of activation, so Adobe may eliminate it from its corporate version. or provide some sort of a bypass. Photoshop Album and Photoshop users also tend to be an entirely different market than corporate customers who buy Acrobat.

“Maybe it’s a one size fits all solution,” McManus said. “But it might not be.”

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